I finally read your blog entry concerning this subject and I must say that I enjoyed it very much. Essentially you have already said, more eloquently, what I tried to say with this thread. I think that the minute we all agree that fighting and combat are two different things we can come to some common ground. As Chris said there are flaws in all the styles that we pracitice, as it relates to dealing with street lethal situations. I remember when I was a student of a pretty well known Reality based instructor who taught a style that evolved out of Bruce Lee's JKD I was initially entralled by the realism of the training. It was fantasitic we trained with weapons from day one. We learned techniques and de-escalation methods and just about anything you could think of. We sparred hard with weapons and without. But after a short period I realized: 1. I was becoming this lethal killing machine for a situation that may never come. 2. Spiritually the only thing I was learning was to not take sh@t from anyone. Which fed into my disharmony with the world around me. 3. The real reason I was taking this art to begin with was based off of some stupid high school fantasy that romantically had me kicking the butts of all those school bullies I had dealt with. 4. No matter how prepared I was it just didn't amount to the type of emotional turmoil an actual life and death confrontation puts you through. I mean military servicemen train for this type of stuff for years with the most realistic training possible and they still talk about the fog of war and come out of conflicts with post-traumatic stress disorder. And contrary to popular belief the bad guy is not always the one who goes to jail. If a jury of your peers (who don't train in the same art you train in) feel that you used excessive force defending yourself then you will have all the ample opportunity to test your Martial arts skills in jail. Remember the police don't always prevent crimes they are often tasked with cleaning them up. And if it comes down to your word against a dead mans, or a man seriously injured sometimes it will not go your way.